I was wondering if anyone has developed ideas, questions, or suggestions about how the Common Core Standards in Reading and Language Arts will influence Response To Intervention? Any thoughts about how they will go together?

My own thinking is that in Kindergarten through 2nd grade, the common core for Reading and Language Arts will align well with Response To Intervention -though the level of text that students will read for comprehension may be more challenging.

Any thoughts about how interventions might be adjusted to relate closer to the common core standards?

I think the Common Core State Standards and RtI fit together quite nicely already, and there is a lot of potential for them to fit together even more tightly moving forward. I do think there are going to be some points of conflict along way in terms of what RtI folks feel is an appropriate scope and sequence for skill instruction and how the Common Core lays it out. Particularly as we try to really define appropriate text complexity at the different grade levels.

With that said, I actually think the Common Core boosts the power of RtI, and vise versa. I think this is going to be particularly the case as we move beyond early skill development in ELA and Math when the materials we have don't always have as strong of a research base as we have K-2 or even K-6.

I think the most promising aspect of the Common Core for RtI is in defining the "what" of Tier 1 at each grade level. The Common Core movement nationally gives us another opportunity to operationalize across systems what students are to know and able to do. And if we can build comprehensive assessment systems/practices, I think we can link interventions to the Common Core as well. By having well-articulated content/skills vertically, hopefully we can assess up and down those standards to find specifically where students are struggling (or accelerating) in the context of the Common Core.

I imagine, particularly at the K-2 level, we could engage in some quality alignment studies linking our intervention materials and the assessments we use to the Common Core, so we can identify what those resources hit in terms of knowledge and skills in that context. If we do this well, it could really help further legitimize and institutionalize RtI practices.

I agree that RTI and Common Core are a great match. We know that having a strong core instructional program is key to an effective RTI process. The potential for aligning instruction and assessment is huge. The work being done on assessment through the Gates Foundation is very exciting. As states move forward in their CC implementation, I hope they capitalize on RTI and make it integral to the instructional process.